For a contemporary account, A Guided Tour of Hell, by Sam Bercholz, founder of Shamabhala Books.

As far as my remark about 'atheism' - I don't necessarily believe in the God(s) that atheists reject. I think a lot of people, believers and atheists alike, believe (or don't believe) in a being like Jupiter.

Chomsky said 'I'll tell you if I'm an atheist, if you can tell me what it is I'm supposed not to believe in'.

You are nothing, said the Buddha — Gregory

Nonsense.

The mythos of Mythras started in Persia and had the sacred bull sacrifice for sins. There are similarities in most of the religions of that area with the upcoming Christianity. Egyptians had communion, lots had baptism, and a number of other similarities can be pointed out. I don't take religious texts as pure history for the simple reason that the religious impulse is not in accord with historical accuracy. All religions make up myths. Syncretism is the heartbeat of religion

Saying you don't have a soul is the core of what Buddha, like it or not

But nowhere in the Buddha's teachings is the expression 'you are nothing'. It's another fake Buddhist quote, of which there are thousands.

Soul=identity

That much is obvious

Nor is there any mention of the word 'soul'. I did an MA thesis on this topic, if you like I'll PM you a hyperlink. Your thinking is muddled.

"You are not" is the same as "you have no soul" . The very first philosophy of Buddha is anatman

Sure

Everywhere it is said that Buddha held we have no soul. To understand this as not eradicating the ego seems like a strained Western attempt to claim Buddha for themselves

I have just looked at your link and the book looks extremely interesting. I have often thought that it was strange that just about all the near death experiences which I have come across are of heavenly realms, light and meeting with loved ones who had died previously. It would make sense for some to be of a hellish nature.

Do you not think that part of the problem may be that the word 'soul' is open to critical examination, because it is not just a static entity. My understanding of Eastern thinking is of existence being comprised of layers, or subtle bodies. Identity is related to the ego, which would not survive but that doesn't mean that there is nothing else. The part which goes into the astral plane would probably be the astral body.

Everywhere it is said that Buddha held we have no soul. — Gregory

That is a misrepresentation. The Buddha never used such a term, it is not part of the Buddhist lexicon. It comes from assuming that the Hindu term ātman, which literally means 'I am', has the same meaning as 'soul', which is questionable in its own right.

The Buddha's objection was to the teaching that there is a permanent, unchanging self, atta, which carries on from life to life 'fixed and immovable like a mountain peak'. This was in the context of a religious culture where the belief in reincarnation was endemic. There were schools of asceticism which said that through the right rituals and actions, the soul could be reborn in perpetuity, forever. This is the kind of view that the Buddha rejected as 'eternalism'.

The opposite 'extreme view' is nihilism, the idea that there are no karmic consequences of actions committed in this life. The 'middle path' is the avoidance of all such 'extreme views'. It is a very subtle teaching and hard to grasp.

Most atheism and materialism falls under the classification of 'nihilism' in the Buddhist view. Belief that one will have 'eternal life in heaven' might map against 'eternalism'. But if neither is true, what is the middle way? That is the question.

The thesis I wrote on it is here.

I argue that this is an example of why the Bible is not a trustworthy source to govern one's life. It's seems painfully obvious to me that tradition Buddhism believes subjective consciousness is all that is and that objectivity and substance is an illusion. Nirvana is knowing that nothing is, a thought without a thinker. The thought itself has no substance they say. If there are alternative readings of this, it reveals of that Christianity too is open to so many interpretations that you can never know what is of "the Lord". Religions of those times have passed through the filter of thousands of years

You are asking an extremely difficult question really, in asking about the value of myth. It all comes down to perspectives on truth: religious knowledge and myths as 'truth'? How do we evaluate it ultimately. — Jack Cummins

First we can distinguish between objective truths and social truths. Clearly, myths and legends fall into the category of social truths.

The shallowest value that myths may offer is that of mere entertainment, but even in this regard myths can resonate on a deep or archetypal level, such as stories that reflect the all to common theme of the hero's journey.

Myths have value in helping to reinforce social truths, and thereby strengthen group solidarity. That is the primary value, I believe. There is an additional value in religion, which is simply that the generator of myths (though they're not seen as myths until there's a paradigm shift) enjoys the position of ultimate authority, because only they have special access to whatever metaphysics they're preaching. Basically any charismatic leader can develop their own social truths and lead the weak minded around like cattle, and that's the negative value of myths.

It's just a matter of trying to grasp what an ancient person MIGHT have meant by a saying. All religions evolve from the times they were started until modern times. The soldiers of Rome took religion from Persia and Greece. Christianity took Greek religion and maybe from the other faiths as well. The first Popes under the Holy Roman Empire considered themselves "rulers under the Sun", which came directly from Roman emporers' self portrayals. Catholicism from them until the Renaissance was a religion of physical light (Consider how many times Aquinas speaks of physical light). Adapt, absord, change. That is what religion does

"In the beginning was the Logos"

Vatican II changed Catholicism

If you had read the various posts which I have written you would see that I am not advocating the Bible as the source for guiding life, but interested in thinking about the issues and questions surrounding religion. Also, my approach to looking at religious experience is one which appreciates the whole field of comparative religion.

I remember you saying you are a recovering Catholic. I use to be Catholic too. Anyhow, when someone is having religious thoughts they are not in the best place to interpret history and the same applies when writing a gospel while filled with religious fervor. That was the point I was after. You can't open the Bible and start with assuming it's history. Would you agree that works of such religious fervor like the NT should not be accepted as detailed history because of the motives behind those books?

It is hard to know the motives of the writers of the Gospels because there is a lot of dispute about the sources. They were probably written and put together a long time after the time of Jesus's death.

I think that it is worth bearing in mind that this is a discussion forum, so all topics are approached as a matter of opinion. Hopefully, participants have read a certain amount and are giving their best, but it is not a specialised research project, so the discussion is primarily of ideas.

I subscribe to Hegelianism, which I see as a German romantic system that is like a unity of Daoism and Confucianism (e.g. yin and yang as a dialetic). I notice how Islam has remnants of the moon religions of the deserts. There is a source of each religious thought in history, a first person to have developed the religion. Reading ancient religions accurately is difficult though.

↪Nikolas
I am certainly in favour of the experiential domain. I didn't know about Simone Weil's teenage experience, probably because until you pointed her out to me, I was not really familiar with her. She definitely seems to be your spiritual mentor. Mine is Carl Jung as I discovered him when I was a teenager and he definitely had an inner struggle in encountering the lived experience of the 'divine'. This is most evident in his autobiography, 'Memories, Dreams and Reflections.'

I am certainly in favour of exploring the transcendent and that also includes the existence of the diabolical, often called the devil. Perhaps the more one searches for God, one is brought to face the devil, or inner demons, too. The main difference of where I come from to most religious people is that I don't really frame my experience in one clear box. I do believe that the questions and areas of exploration of religion are of central importance though. Probably, the people who do partake within a specific religion rather than go outside it have an easier path. The individual quests can be hazardous. — Jack Cummins

We are not that far apart. Years ago when I had my first mystical experience I was a musician who drank too much. I assumed life was meaningless. Then I had the good fortune to discover a book which answered my questions to such a degree that it changed my life. The world wasn't meaningless but just responding to natural laws as it must. Imagine how it felt to realize that the world and the universe it functions within makes perfect sense but I was just too blind to the vertical psychological experience to see it. Before this in college I knew I was surrounded by idiots but now I saw that i was an idiot not to see it. It dawned on me that I needed help and an influence in the form of a book appeared when it was necessary to help me open to the vertical direction. Coincidence? No, not with that intensity.

I don't speak of this influence on a casual internet forum but do so privately because of all the negativity. A person can read a word like "God" for example and acquire negative connotation to it. So why hurt people?

Discussing Simone is easy. There is no Simone tradition or school. There is just Simone. People like Albert Camus and T.S. Eliot felt the value in her letters and essays so compiled them into books for no money. Simone Weil is an individual who cannot be classified. Leon Trotsky praised her when she was a Marxist and later she became an intellectual influence on Pope Paul VI. She was "Plato's spiritual child." and someone I can learn from who offers experiential verification far more valuable than opinions.


I had the impression of being in the presence of an absolutely transparent soul which was ready to be reabsorbed into original light. I can still hear Simone Weil’s voice in the deserted streets of Marseilles as she took me back to my hotel in the early hours of the morning; she was speaking of the Gospel; her mouth uttered thoughts as a tree gives its fruit, her words did not express reality, they poured it into me in its naked totality; I felt myself to be transported beyond space and time and literally fed with light.
Gustav Thibon

True? Who knows. We cannot judge these people by social standards. They are individuals and beyond classification.

Believers cherry pick what they want to accept in all religions. — Tom Storm

I believe you can expand this to... "Thinkers cherry-pick that which they wish to accept."

I believe you can expand this to... "Thinkers cherry-pick that which they wish to accept." — synthesis

That is sometimes true. But it depends on the cherry picking. If you are only picking that which you think you understand and you are banishing that which you don't. Then the thinking won't be so great. There's probably a vast difference between cherry picking (often used as a pejorative) and judicious selection. But I'll leave it to others to decide where the fault lines lie.

Hello. Yes interesting point regarding Descartes though from what I know (not enough, surely) of his writings leads me to think he and I would have some disagreements in these areas. Hah. But yes, I do not want to get off topic.

I always seem to bring things down to lower levels of abstraction. To me a near death experience is exactly what the words say. Thoughts that would normally occur during moments of attenuated awareness. Such as Delusions, clear memories of events that have never occured or hallucinations. Misinterpretation of present observations together with some low level of conscious control.

What else could they be?
What near death experiences do Bushmen have?

What near death experiences do Bushmen have? — Ken Edwards

Are you close friends with any anthropologists, by any chance? They might be able to help out.

Well, to be frank, humans live, at the most, up to 70 years, give or take 5 years on average. The lifespans were much, much shorter back in the day when religion was all the rage. We have the, how shall I put it, the benefit/privilege of hindsight, thanks to writers, historians, etc. and can actually see how history has played out up to this point in human history. Our ability to do this is a godsend for the simple reason that we can make out, quite clearly I suppose, where we got it right and where we f**ked up. You have that advantage and it shows in your comments. You're lucky in that sense because you have the golden opportunity to learn from the mistakes and good decisions of your forefathers. I don't know why I said this but I hope you can tie it all together at the end.

Religion is, whatever said and done, advertised/presented as a force of good - that's the basic idea of all religions and this realization is key to understanding why people behaved/behave/will behave the way they did/do/will do. Surely, if one feels that one is doing good, that good being defined by one's particular religious affiliation, then one will have a conviction, an unshakable conviction, that one must do whatever it is that one sees as good. This, in a nutshell, gives you a general idea of all acts committed in the name of religion.

The crusaders, Christian jihadists if I may say so, were all acting in good faith - they were thoroughly convinced that they were good and that what they were doing was good. They didn't have the privilege of possessing historical records on similar religious undertakings as theirs (unlike present-day Moslem jihadists) that could've changed their minds regarding the nature of holy wars. People like us, in the 21st century, are luckier in that we have a somewhat reliable record of past human activities and that gives us an advantage, an unfair one if the matter concerns the moral aspects of actions.

I know, I've experienced, that there's such a thing as love at first sight but then I've also heard people say that it takes time to know people. I suppose a similar rule, if I may call it that, applies to the relationship between ideologies and people. Religion, because of how appealing its core ideas are, could've been a case of love at first sight but then, over centuries of this rather passionate affair between man and god, we've begun to realize that we, some of us at least, want to end this nexus.

You say, "Yes, it does seem that there does appear to be some higher source behind the scenes of the laws of the universe, some mysterious factor that gives rise to the laws of nature and ignites the spark of consciousness. Many have called this God, or the Tao.

I may well be mistaken here in this present assumption that people are probably similar all over the world and that these thoughts are universal and that there does appear universally to all of them to be some higher source behind the scenes of the laws of the universe, some mysterious factor that gives rise to the laws of nature, some need for feelings of religiosity itself. Also perhaps a "need" or yearning that would permit them to to observe or to know more.
If that yearning actually is universally the case then obviously this yearning must be genetic and inherited and would exist independent of thought or logic and indeed there would be no need for these thoughts to be in any way logical or reasonable or be remotely connected to some actual "higher source."
Do I make any sense?

Hi wayfarer. No, I live happily in highland Guatemala among Mayan Indians whom I have taught how to make hi temperature stoneware. I have sadly no resources at all for the necessary scholarly research which is a big handicap to my participation here.